Week 4

Finally!! A win! Brees (who has entirely fallen from grace) and my backup Jason Campbell both had bye weeks, so I picked up Damon Huard off of waivers — not a bad pick!! In other news, LT actually broke 20! Muhsin Muhammed is finally back from his injury and chipped in. Barber had an off week, but since poor Ross’s team only scraped together 18 points (lots of midgame injuries and the Broncos defense contributed -7!), it was a good week for that to fall.

Leonard Pope isn’t doing much. I’ve definitely been having tight end problems (a problem shared by the whole league).

QB
QB Damon Huard, KC 15
RUNNING BACKS
RB LaDainian Tomlinson, SD 22
RB Marion Barber, Dal 7
RECEIVERS
WR Deion Branch, Sea 14
WR Muhsin Muhammad, Chi 10
TE Leonard Pope, Ari 0
DEFENSE
D/ST Patriots 9
KICKER
K Matt Stover, Bal 7
BENCH
QB Drew Brees, NO (BYE) 0
QB Jason Campbell, Was (BYE) 0
RB Michael Pittman, TB 9
RB Tony Hunt, Phi 0
WR Donte’ Stallworth, NE 4
WR Reggie Brown, Phi 1
WR Marty Booker, Mia 0
K Stephen Gostkowski, NE 10

And even if it’s going to clash with the mauve in the football scoring table, here’s a photo Kevin took of the trees on the Microsoft campus, which always seem to turn a few weeks earlier than the trees in the rest of the area. His flag football league has started up again, and so this is from last Saturday’s game.

Week 3

This was a great week with a brutal finish. Everyone (except for newbie TE Pope) played well on Sunday, and on Monday morning I was up 82-80 with only Drew Brees left to play. I should have pulled him (everyone on Court’s team had gone) and played without a QB, but I left him in, and he sacked and interceptioned his way to -2 points. In my league, a tie goes to the team with the winning QB, and since Court’s Peyton Manning managed to stay above zero, he won the match. 0 and 3, due to coach error. Major bummer. :-/ And after 16 points for the kicker, too!! (Who, it should be noted, outscored LT for the second week in a row — nasty pattern.)

QB
QB Drew Brees, NO -2
RUNNING BACKS
RB LaDainian Tomlinson, SD 15
RB Marion Barber, Dal 24
RECEIVERS
WR Deion Branch, Sea 15
WR Jacoby Jones, Hou 2
TE Leonard Pope, Ari 0
DEFENSE
D/ST Patriots 10
KICKER
K Matt Stover, Bal 16
BENCH
QB Jason Campbell, Was 8
RB Michael Pittman, TB 8
RB Leon Washington, NYJ 7
WR Muhsin Muhammad, Chi 2
WR Donte’ Stallworth, NE 2
WR Reggie Brown, Phi 2
TE L.J. Smith, Phi 0
K Stephen Gostkowski, NE 8

Week 2

Ouch. Keith had an amazing day: Steve Smith had 8 receptions for 153 yards, and 3 of them were touchdowns, which gave Smith 36 points. Ouch. Unfortunately, the rest of his team kept pace. My defense outscored his Seahawks 13-1, and my kicker won 9-6. But when you’re playing someone with 137 points, and your kicker outscores your #1 slot running back, there isn’t much hope.

Marion Barber had a great day — I like that Julius Jones keeps marching the ball down the field and that they give it to Barber in the endzone. And it’s encouraging that Brees managed to score positive points. Also, Deion Branch finally had some touches. Once again, maybe next week will be better?

QB
QB Drew Brees, NO 11
RUNNING BACKS
RB LaDainian Tomlinson, SD 5
RB Marion Barber, Dal 22
RECEIVERS
WR Reggie Brown, Phi 2
WR Donte’ Stallworth, NE 1
TE L.J. Smith, Phi 1
DEFENSE
D/ST Patriots 13
KICKER
K Matt Stover, Bal 9
BENCH
QB Jason Campbell, Was 12
RB Michael Pittman, TB 2
RB Leon Washington, NYJ 0
RB Tony Hunt, Phi 0
WR Deion Branch, Sea 13
WR Muhsin Muhammad, Chi 0
TE Tony Scheffler, Den 0
K Stephen Gostkowski, NE 8

Sorry that it’s been so long

Oh, man, I’m far behind. I got lulled by my lack of bloggable photos and didn’t post, and now all sorts of interesting things have happened: the start of (fantasy) football and the related knitting, the back deck gardening success, the baby born (and sweater, etc. revealed, finally), the quilt progress and regression…

Usually I cope with lack of posting by just putting up five posts in a night (RSS feeds be damned), but for some reason this all feels intermingled, so this will be the longest post ever. Sorry?

So first of all, I went to the Farmers’ market a week ago Saturday. My intention was to pick up flowers, peaches and veggies (all of which were accomplished with the typical farmers’ market glee), but there were a few fun additions. I ran into Pam from my knitting group at the skirt stall, fun. And then after I was done shopping, I returned to the booth and bought one! (My Christmas stocking had a bit of fun money in it, and though we’re a full ¾ of the year later, I found something great to use it on. 🙂 Nice! )

Here are the farmers market flowers with the front of Isabella. I’ve finally made it to the lace – the knitting is so, so much more interesting now. I’ve made quite a few more rows since this photo and they’ve just flown by. All of the football in the last week hasn’t hurt the progress!

The plants on the back deck have been entertaining. The tomatoes are going strong. I’ve picked five so far, and there are at least 10 more in various stages of ripening waiting in the wings. The beans keep appearing – every time I give up and expect the end, I see 7 more waiting to be picked. No complaints! Best snack ever.

The strawberries just started blooming again a few weeks ago, and the fruits are closer and closer to being ripe to pick. And, exciting to me, the poor pepper plant that got overrun by the beans, is actually making peppers regardless. How cool!! Definitely runty and late, but I’m just delighted by every sign of progress.

And finally, I’ve been working on the pine trees for the quilt. They’ve been weighing on me ( a classic case of unexecutable vision), and I finally charted and started to construct them last weekend. Here’s the result about a third of the way in…

Since then I’ve been finishing and ripping back squares without quite finishing anything. I LOVE the deep-dark pine tree colors up close, but against the lake and land business, they don’t really work. I’m struggling to come up with a reasonable solution… so far I’ve tried improving the tree/water contrast (helps, but not enough). Next up is mixing in more medium greens to go with the darks. I may have to switch to mountains and hills and then return to this – I love the squares but they just don’t fit the quilt.
I meant to write about the baby knitting as part of my catch-all post, but then realized that it would be easier to have my pattern notes separate. So, to be carried on in a later post… 🙂

Week 1

This was a deflating start to the season. LT pulled it together for 17 (though that really doesn’t compare with some of last year’s numbers), and Marion Barber was decent. The Patriots D and the kicker contributed some. But my #2 draft pick Drew Brees just gained and lost the same three points over and over, my wide receivers didn’t do anything, and my bench doesn’t give me hope for next week. Eric played a Seattle trio of Shaun Alexander (my disasterous first pick last year), Maurice Morris, and DJ Hackett (who wasn’t even playing due to injury), and beat me 68-50. On the plus side, things have to improve next week?

QB
QB Drew Brees, NO 0
RUNNING BACKS
RB LaDainian Tomlinson, SD 17
RB Marion Barber, Dal 14
RECEIVERS
WR Deion Branch, Sea 0
WR Reggie Brown, Phi 1
TE L.J. Smith, Phi 1
DEFENSE
D/ST Patriots 9
KICKER
K Matt Stover, Bal 8
BENCH
QB Jason Campbell, Was 4
RB Michael Pittman, TB 3
RB Leon Washington, NYJ 4
RB Tony Hunt, Phi 0
WR Donte’ Stallworth, NE 1
WR Muhsin Muhammad, Chi 0
TE Tony Scheffler, Den 0
K Stephen Gostkowski, NE 8

Win some, lose some

The football viewing continues. Going into the weekend, we were both psyched — three teams in contention: the Eagles, Seahawks and Patriots. Despite our loyal viewing, however, the results weren’t stellar — only the Patriots made it through. 🙁

That aside, I had a lot of couch time, and made major progress on the sock. By mid-Saturday, it looked like this:

Can you see what that is? (Aside from the high-def football, now that Kevin has a new power source and his computer and media center are back up!)

It’s a heel turn!! A *major* mental victory, if not a real (sports) one.